


Paterfamilias

by simplyprologue



Series: Careful the Tale You Tell (Children Will Listen) [11]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Babies, Charlotte-fic, F/M, Future Fic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-13 08:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2143656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“It wasn’t planned?” Habib asks, instead of berating him for skipping seven and a half months’ worth of appointments. Although, Will thinks, after the four year stretch where he just ignored psychiatric care sum total, him showing up in the vague aftermath of any personal problem is an impressive feat of self-awareness.</i> </p><p>Three weeks after the ultrasound technician tells them it's a boy, Will finds himself back in therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Present Day

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** So I know I've kind of skirted around Will's issues with his father thus far in this little universe, and when I decided to give Charlotte a little sibling I kind of decided that now was the moment to do it. Chapter One will be posted tomorrow and I'm staring down the rough draft of Chapter Two right now, and will probably start Chapter Three tonight, so hopefully something resembling a schedule will appear. Or so I hope. Thus far it's looking like a prologue plus six chapters, but we'll see. 
> 
> "Paterfamilias" was the Roman word for the oldest male in the family, who had a legal and moral duty to take care of those within his household and extended family, including his slaves and clients and others given to be under his care. He was to be, himself, the model Roman citizen and participate in public life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **NOTICE:** As of 9/5/15, this fanfiction has been rewritten to be canon-compliant. When I first wrote it, it was in the yawning fourteen-month wait between seasons 2 and 3, which means I've gone back and inserted into this fic what happened and what we learned in Season 3. Which means that Will's age has been upped, Charlotte's has been knocked down a few years, and I had to write the dog out. (Don't... ask.) Also backstory has changed, Charlie is dead, Will is a felon, John McAvoy isn't Catholic (RIP my headcanons). So while the bulk of the story and the narrative remains in-tact, I've un-Jossed the details. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Thanks for reading!**

There was the three of them, for the longest time. Liz, only eighteen months younger than him, has always been there for him to have to protect. Mickey came along when he was five, still too young to do much about it but old enough to understand that the other kids in his kindergarten class didn’t have to hide their younger brothers and sisters from Dad because he liked to use his fists when he drank. It was the three of them until he was twelve, and Fiona was born. By then he was old enough to know exactly the circumstances of their family, and how to fight back.

Fatherhood, he’s since realized, is a lot like what his relationship with Fiona is. Except at twelve he was awkward and fumbling, and while at fifty-four he’s still unsure, he’s no longer a gawky teenager struggling to rub two nickels together to feed his younger siblings, maneuver around his dad’s drunken bouts of violence, and keep the school officials off his tail.

He doesn’t remember a time where he wasn’t trying to protect someone, wasn’t taking a hit for someone, or an insult.

“It wasn’t planned?” Habib asks, instead of berating him for skipping seven and a half months’ worth of appointments. Although, Will thinks, after the four year stretch where he just ignored psychiatric care sum total, him showing up in the vague aftermath of any personal problem is an impressive feat of self-awareness.

He laughs, realizing that he sounds half-desperate, but shrugs it off. “I’ve found over the past fifteen years that Mac and I rarely plan anything in our personal lives.”

Not that it hasn’t necessarily worked out for them, in the end: a marriage going three years strong, a trophy brownstone on the Upper East Side, the number one news show on cable, and a darling little girl.

And now a little boy on the way.

Will was doing exceptionally well, until he heard the ultrasound technician say the “little boy” part, three weeks ago. Since then has been a spiral down into near-nightly panic attacks and nightmares that cause dizzying flashbacks to the small Nebraska farmhouse and his dad, standing over him with a bottle in one hand with the fingers on the other curled into a fist, his little siblings screaming somewhere in the background, or from across the room, where he can’t get to them in time.

Habib nods. “But you’re happy about it? MacKenzie’s pregnancy.”

Will’s answer is a glare in his therapist’s direction. “I’d like to go back to — the kid’s not even born yet and I’m already gonna fuck it up.”

“But you were happy, when she first told you?”

His answer is almost sarcastic.

Almost, but then he remembers he has sixteen weeks to figure this out before his son’s scheduled appearance, and Charlotte was almost a month early, so he knows that there’s really no running on schedule with babies.

“Ecstatic,” he does say, steadfastly ignoring the softening expression on Habib’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	2. Twenty-One Weeks Ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** Thanks to everyone who left comments and kudos on the prologue! Here is chapter one, which flashes back quite a bit in time. :)

There’s less pomp about it the second time around. They’ve fallen into a routine, and while things are hectic with a two-year-old, Charlotte’s finally grown up enough that they can keep a schedule that begets some sense of predictability in their lives.

Mac marks the days she’s supposed to get her period on the calendar in their bedroom with a little red dot on the bottom right corner. The first day comes and her period doesn’t, but that’s normal enough. She’s forty-one and her cycle has always been irregular anyway, even if it evened out a bit after Charlotte was born; a day late isn’t a cause for alarm. The second day they begin to be suspicious, and after the third she stops at CVS on the ride home.

After putting Charlotte to bed they retreat to their bedroom. Will sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed and watches Mac disappear into the master bathroom, unbuttoning her blouse with one hand, paper bag of pregnancy tests in the other.

“I swear to god, if you’ve knocked me up again,” she grumbles, mostly teasing. He can hear her clothes hitting the tile floor — the flutter of her heavy wool skirt, the clack of her belt buckle on tile.

He laughs, pulling his sweater up over his head before shrugging out of his dress shirt. “You’re the one who couldn’t wait to get home.”

Mac scoffs, and he hears the tearing of cardboard. The toilet lid opens and she asks him to put three minutes on the clock, and thirty seconds later his wife is padding out back into the bedroom in nothing but black lace briefs.

Affectionately rolling her eyes at his appreciative stare, she hands him the tests. Four of them, two brands, none of them yet showing any signs of life.

Leaning down she picks up the shirt he’s discarded onto the floor and slips her arms into it, the hem falling to the tops of her thighs. “It was once!” she protests, smiling and climbing onto her side of the bed. “You’re fifty-three, you should not be this virile—”

“Thank you?” he says, skeptic, although vaguely proud of himself in an incredibly primordial way. “I think.”

Mac pauses to straddle him, kiss him, and then flop over onto her back on her side of the bed.

“Charlotte took us _months_ of hard work,” she says in a fond and reminiscent tone. “All down to one night before you officially became a felon.”

He brings one of the pregnancy tests back up to level with his eye line, grousing impatiently. The past few hours the both of them have been mentally planning what to do if the stick(s) turns pink.

(Or just says “pregnant,” considering the brands Mac chose.)

The brownstone they moved to last year (they traded a doorman and a penthouse for Charlotte to grow up in a house, with a backyard, albeit a tiny one) has more than enough space for another baby, and Charlotte is old enough to be somewhat autonomous. In the fall — a few months before the maybe baby comes — she’ll be starting all day nursery school, and they have a deep bench of babysitters that they can rely on.

Taking her hand — he knows Mac’s probably freaking out, no matter how much covert smiling she’s been doing at him all day — he watches the timer on his phone tick down to one minute.

“Oh god,” she blurts out, half-aghast and half-amused.

“What?”

Mac snorts, hoisting herself up to sit back against the pillows lined up along the headboard. “We can’t tell the baby they were conceived during a romp on the sink in your bathroom.”

Not that it wasn’t fun, Will thinks. Or that he doesn’t appreciate Mac hauling him into the bathroom attached to his office following the kind of show where the White House calls to ask about their sources.

It’s just that Mac was starting to get a reaction to the pill she was on — something to do with the beta blockers she takes for her heart palpitations — and went off it months ago, and was supposed to get an IUD implanted but then Charlotte got the flu, and then he got the flu, and the appointment kept getting pushed back, they were back to using condoms like two college students.

Except when Mac grabbed him by his lapels two and a half weeks ago and pushed him very firmly into his bathroom at work, where he very much did not stash contraceptives. Although he distinctly remembers Mac declaring that she hadn’t a fuck to give, thank you very much, in the middle of unzipping his trousers.

“I mean,” he starts, looking down at Mac when she leans her head on his shoulder, “we can’t tell Charlotte that she was conceived because you were concerned about sending me off to prison with a proper goodbye.”

Mac snorts. “Do you still really think it was then?”

There’s been debate, but simple counting indicates that the end of their scarce seven month sojourn as a childless couple came to an end with a twelve hour marathon of Law and Order reruns that they largely spent naked and joined at the pelvis when not snarking about improper procedure and ripped-from-the-headlines plots.

“The math heavily indicates it was then.” He picks up her hand and laces their fingers together. Twenty seconds. “And the law of averages.”

She moans. “Oh god… they’re going to do the math. They’re going to know it was Valentine’s Day. Although they won’t know it was in your office…”

_Ten… nine… eight…_

Mac squeezes his fingers in hers.

_Seven… six… five…_

This is a good thing, he thinks. A baby is a good thing. Not just thinks, but feels. And the way MacKenzie is looking at him right now he knows even if the tests turn out negative, they’re going to start trying. They’re terrible planners but once something they want dangles in front of them they realize they want it and they take it, and—

_Four… three…. two…_

He barely gets a glance at the tests before Mac is pushing him down onto the bed, arms wrapping around his neck.

Here they go again.

 

* * *

 

After, much later, when they’re lying on their backs under the covers, the full ramifications of what has happened — what is going to happen — begin to sink in. It's not abstract, like it was when they found out about Charlotte, when they spent days with their heads in the clouds about the maybe-baby going back and forth about what features should be inherited and what color to paint the nursery and how all names starting with the letter M should immediately be stricken from the list of candidates.

(It was all they could do, to hide however temporarily from the fact that Charlie was _dead_ and that Lucas Pruitt was their new overlord.)

This time the first thought that crosses his mind — when he can feel all his extremities and he’s caught his breath — is how tired they’re going to be with two under three.

Mac nods, drawing the duvet up to her shoulders before rolling to curl into his side.

“I wonder how Charlotte’s going to take the news that she’s going to be a big sister,” she muses. And then snorts. “We might have to explain the birds and the bees to her, you know.”

“Fuck.”

If only they had a less inquisitive child. But she’s theirs, so there wasn’t even a shot in hell she’d be anything besides interrogative.

Laughing, she tangles their legs together. “You, mister, grew up on a farm. I’d imagine you were told the honest truth fairly early on—”

“I’d really rather her not find out the way I did,” he hastily says, pushing himself up a bit onto the stack of pillows still against the headboard. Like most lessons from his dad, being taught about sex was a barbed and pointed objective for the man. Will thinks he had asked, because his mother was pregnant with Michael and his dad knew that the old song and dance about mommies and daddies being in love was—

Well, even if John McAvoy had thought Will would believe it, he wasn’t the kind of man to allow his children to indulge in any innocence.

Lifting her eyebrows, Mac stares up at him questioningly, with the same inquisitive look that she taught Charlotte to wear. “How did you find out?”

“Dad wanted to inseminate the heifer he’d just bought off a neighbor. I was five.” He twirls a lock of her hair around his index finger and hesitates for a moment, but decides not to linger over everything that his father was and more pointedly, wasn’t. He pulls her hair teasingly. “You?”

A wry smile tugs at the corner of her lips.

“I walked in on the French Ambassador bending his secretary over the desk in his private study during a diplomatic dinner. My mum’s face when I asked why his Excellency was making Mademoiselle Sinclair make those noises like she was in pain…” Mac drifts off suggestively, and Will thanks god that they yet haven’t been caught out when they’ve forgot to lock their bedroom door. “And then she told Dad, who if I recall correctly, used the incident to make the Ambassador advocate the British rider on something or other to President Mitterrand. I mean, I didn’t realize what they were doing until later on.”

Peering up at him, she dissolves into giggles at his disbelieving snort.

“Okay, so neither of us have—”

“No, we can’t exactly use the ways we were taught. If nothing else for the lack of cattle on Manhattan,” she says, lightly and facetiously, before rolling onto her back, arms splaying. “I think there are books for this kind of thing,” she tells him, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “It seems like there’d be a market to exploit for that.”

She sighs, but after that, is quiet for a long while, a melancholic kind of nervous taking hold of her features.   

“I mean, we probably shouldn’t tell her for a little while,” he says, turning onto his side to face her. Under the sheets, he slides his hand over to rest atop her abdomen. It was around week ten, with Charlotte, that they were finally able to feel something. There’d been weight gain before that — her thighs and hips had softened and her breasts had gotten larger — but he remembers week ten being when something resembling a bump had appeared.

He wants to tell her that everything will be fine, but at the moment that would only sound like an empty platitude to her. Will wants to tell her that they have money, they have people who can help them, and the best OB in the city, and if something needs to be taken care of they can, without a doubt, barring the worst. And with Charlotte there had been low blood pressure and then high blood pressure and questionable blood sugar and bed rest, towards the very end, and Mac wound up going into labor in the middle of a blizzard three weeks and change early while he was in DC—

But it had turned out alright.

“Yeah,” she agrees, still staring up at the ceiling. Reflexively, she smiles nervously, moving her hands to rest over his, one of her thumbs rubbing circles over one of his knuckles. “I’ll call the doctor in the morning and see when she can fit me in. I think my schedule for Wednesday is pretty light, except for the afternoon affiliates meeting. Which neither of us can miss. But it's been a few months since I've pissed Pruitt off, so who knows.”

“It’s gonna be fine,” he tells her, moving closer until the tip of his nose touches her cheek.

“I know,” she giggles, batting at him when he kisses her cheek.

He kisses her cheek again, more softly. “Not to, you know, tempt the wrath of whoever, but everything turned out just fine the first go around.”

“More than fine, really,” she murmurs, her smile sticking around. “The first one turned out pretty good. I just hope she doesn’t think that we’re having another baby because we hate her or something, because you took her to see Cinderella two weeks ago and the last thing we need is for her to switch over from her very interesting and very adorable rendition of _Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful_ to _In My Own Little Corner_ , so—”

Chuckling, he cuts her off there. “I still stand by my assertion that Charlotte singing Rodgers and Hammerstein is vastly better than her _Frozen_ phase.”

Mac makes a contented little noise, squirming even closer to him. “At least she got your singing voice, not mine. Anything she’ll want to sing along to’ll be preferable to a newborn screaming at three in the morning, regardless.”

Barring nothing else, the fact that the two of them are already insomniacs (he takes hours on end to actually fall asleep, and Mac jerks awake at both the slightest thing or at the end of a REM cycle) did make it at least a little bit easier the last time. Not that the first couple months of Charlotte’s life weren’t excruciatingly exhausted, or that Mac, who breast fed until ten months, wasn’t awake every two hours for months on end and hormonal besides, but at least he was generally awake as well to get up and bring Charlotte to her.

If this kid is anything like their big sister, then they probably need to move Charlotte away from their room so she doesn’t show up to nursery school looking like one of the walking dead.

(That’ll be reserved for him, showing up for work. Or Mac. Depending on how long she wants to stay out of the game this time.)

“We should move her to one of the upstairs bedrooms. She’s been wanting to paint her bedroom pink for months now anyway.” When they moved into the brownstone last year they’d chosen green, like her nursery in apartment had been. And now Charlotte has fallen in love with Beatrix Potter. He’s sure they can find a mural painter who can do something with that in pink. “And this way we keep in line with our ‘no negotiating with the little terrorist’ policy.”

Mac frowns. “I don’t like the idea of having her on another floor. She’s still so little.”

Four isn’t little he thinks, a jarring cognitive dissonance flooding him with anxiety for a moment before he shakes it off. Charlotte has never, will never, have to do things that he’s had to do. Not for herself and not for her little brother or sister. She’s two, he tells himself. Charlotte is two and believes in fairies and mermaids and doesn’t know anything but a warm safe home and a kitchen that never runs out of food. Charlotte is little.

And he knows that. Knows she’s little because how her tiny body fits against his chest when he picks her up, or between him and Mac when they bring her into bed. Because she still likes to hold his hand when she walks downstairs and because her blanket is still bigger than her, trailing on the floor behind her.

Will can never tell if he’s babying Charlotte or not babying her enough.

“Either way, there’s only two bedrooms on this one. We could wait until the baby’s four of five months old, but if they have the same set of lungs that Charlie did—” And they do want Charlotte to _like_ the baby, which will be better facilitated if Charlotte can sleep. Sighing, he curls one of his arms under Mac’s neck, kissing her cheek again at her worried expression. “There’s an elevator, Mac. You know she likes to press the buttons, and we’ll put her in the bedroom that has its own bathroom.”

“I know, I know,” she sighs, letting her eyes drift closed. Their bedroom is filled for a long moment with nothing but the sound of their breathing, deep and even, until a mischievous grin appears on Mac’s lips. “You’re not going to be able to rescue her from the monsters in her closet.”

He’ll put a fucking baby monitor in her room, if it comes to it. “Bite your tongue.”

It’s quiet again after that, until he looks down at Mac to see if she’s fallen asleep and sees her smiling — unconsciously, he thinks — up at him. Raising an eyebrow, he rubs his thumb in a wide circle across the bottom of her belly.

What? he silently asks.

Contentedly, she sighs again. “We’re having another baby.” And then giggles, clearly amusing herself. “We’d better break-out the picket fence.”

Rolling his eyes (affectionately, he hopes it looks like), he kisses her once more. Soon after, MacKenzie does drop off, making the small snuffling noises she makes when she’s settling into to slumber, her nose winding being pressed somewhere along his collarbone. But he lies awake — like always, but not with worry tonight — tracing the same path over her stomach again and again.

A baby.

Is it possible for them to be so lucky, twice?


	3. Present Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** I would like to thank whatever motivated me today to get up off my figurative ass and finish this chapter. (Just kidding, I know what it is. I'm back at college and avoiding coursework, which means I'm about to become a lot more prolific as a result.) Thanks to everyone who's waited for Chapter Two!

_“But you were happy, when she first told you?”_

_His answer is almost sarcastic._

_Almost, but then he remembers he has sixteen weeks to figure this out before his son’s scheduled appearance, and Charlotte was almost a month early, so he knows that there’s really no running on schedule with babies._

_“Ecstatic,” he does say, steadfastly ignoring the softening expression on Habib’s face._

“With Charlotte, how did she tell you?” Habib asks, almost as if the question was inconsequential. It definitely seems it; Will has no idea where his therapist is going with this line of questioning, but then again this is the bastard who once waited fifty minutes to tell him his insomnia was being exacerbated by bacon and tricked him into actually staying for a session.

He swallows hard, eyes flickering to the bookshelf lining the wall at the back of the office. What he wouldn’t give for these memories to be _just_ happy.

“She found out during Charlie’s funeral. She got a call from the doctor about something in her blood work, and I freaked and made her leave the service to call the doctor back,” he gets out, his throat as dry as paper. “I found out during the service.”

The ride home, though, after he swept her into his arms and kissed her until they had to catch their breath.

“How did you feel?” Habib asks, and Will does his best to ignore his wan smile.

Instead, he leans forward in his chair, lacing his fingers together. “Happy. Sad, because Charlie would have liked to have known — but happy. We wanted a baby.”

They’d been so thoughtlessly happy. _We’re having a baby._ They both knew, he think, how things could go wrong. But those things were intangible, and for a night, they both could pretend that they happened to other people. Despite all evidence to the contrary that bad things happened to the two of them, and at a higher incidence than normal people.

Habib nods. “How long did it take to stop feeling happy?”

Will exhales heavily, feeling the muscles in one cheek twitch. “A few days.”

Will remembers thinking a day or two later, that first Saturday after they found out about Charlotte, lying in bed tangled up together and MacKenzie voiced her first worry.

Wasn’t it time again for something bad to happen to them?

But he’d wrapped his arms around her and shushed her, promised her that he’d take care of them both, like that was something he could promise. Mac had laughed, and called bullshit. But he hadn’t even thought about how bad he could be at it, not until they’d started telling other people and he remembered that the baby’s needs would rapidly encompass more than being fed and clothed and dry.

He’d prayed that Charlotte would be a girl. He still wonders if that makes him terrible.

But he’d been so certain — he’s good with Maggie, Sloan, Tess, Tamara, Jenna, far closer with them than any of the guys in the office except perhaps Jim, because of Mac, or Don, when they weren’t fighting — he’d be better with a girl. He all but raised Fiona, and he knows that it’s different, with girls.

He notices Habib watching him.

“And this time?” he’s asked.

“Until the ultrasound appointment. Well, no. I thought I could still handle it, until the—the—”

He cages his inability to finish his explanation with an irreverent flip of his hand.

“Flashbacks and panic attacks started,” Habib continues smoothly, nodding.

“Yeah,” he answers quietly. “I was relieved when the ultrasound technician told us that Charlie was going to be a girl. I could handle a girl. That’s when it — when it started getting better.”

“What are you worried about?”

It’s not just like — it’s not that he’s afraid he’ll be like his father. Even though Charlotte has turned out to be an alarmingly placid child, she’s definitely had times where she’s displayed his and Mac’s more temperamental traits, and he’s never felt the urge to—

He can’t even finish the thought in his head.

Charlotte’s two. She throws tantrums like all children do and he and Mac sit her in a corner, set the timer, and wait it out. She’s sneaky and mischievous and prone to painting on surfaces that she shouldn’t and stealing Mac’s make-up and jewelry and heaven forfend any staffer think that candy is safe at their desks, but they make her explain why she knows what she did is wrong and sit her in a corner and set the timer.

(And Mac worries about Charlotte’s manipulative streak, like Charlotte doesn’t get it right from her.

Besides, he thinks it’s adorable.)

But Charlie’s a little kid. And his parents were kids themselves when they had him.

He finally winds up answering, “That I’ll — it’s not that I’m worried I’m going to be like him. I’m worried I’ll be — distant. Or — just not good. That he’ll know that I’m fucked up over this, and hate me for it.”

 _God, that’s incredibly self-absorbed_ , he thinks.

“Why do you think you’ll be distant?” Habib asks. But that’s another thing that Will can’t quite, or rather, won’t, put words to. He’s already obsessive enough. Nodding curtly at the lack of response, Habib changes direction. “Okay, why do you think you’re having flashbacks?”

Will sighs.

That’s not the direction he wanted to go in.

“I don’t know,” he answers, feeling tension rise in his shoulders.

“I think you do,” Habib answers in an irritatingly-calm tone voice.

“I don’t know,” Will enunciates clearly, realizing his voice is marked by exasperation. “If I knew I’d say so.”

“Alright,” Habib concedes, although Will is certain that the therapist will bring it up later anyway. “And your daughter? How did she take the news about the new addition?”

“Well,” he answers quickly, the corners of his mouth turning up into a smile of their own volition. They’d tried to wait to tell her, but then morning sickness had knocked Mac out and it had just been easier to try to allay Charlotte’s fears with the truth than anything else. And Charlotte had been so mature, in turn, running to and fro bringing Mac water and peppermints and ginger candies and cutting herself off mid-shriek, whispering an apology.

Which, of course—

Charlotte’s been angling for a little brother or sister since Isabelle Hirsch was born, but he hadn’t expected that if the day came he’d see his two-year-old curled up in bed with her mother, sucking her thumb and quietly watching the morning news without complaint while Mum battled nausea and a headache.

Charlie’s a great kid.

He doesn’t know if his luck will hold out for a second great kid. What if he loses his patience, or disengages, or just fucking sucks?

“She’s excited,” Will continues, more slowly. “I think Mac bought a dozen books or something about becoming a big sister with dumbed-down explanations of biology and — not that it matters, to Charlie. I mean, a ton of our friends have — she calls them her cousins. Elliot Hirsch—”

“He’s the one at ten o’clock, right?” Habib scribbles something on the legal pad resting next to him.

He doesn’t know what that has to do with anything, but, “Yeah. He and his wife have four kids.”

“And?”

Seriously, what the hell?

Will shrugs. “I don’t know, Charlie was excited. When we told her. And two of our other friends have a son who’s eight months and two of our employees who she calls aunt and uncle are having a kid in January, and they’re getting married soon and — Charlie’s very excited. But the past two months—”

He was the one who picked up the phone when Susan called in the middle of the night, barely processing her saying _Thank god, I was hoping she wouldn’t have to hear this over the phone_ and _Ted’s had another heart attack_ before switching on the light on his nightstand and rubbing Mac’s back until she woke up, all the while trying to figure out how to say _His heart stopped for two minutes, but he’s responding well on bypass in the cardiac ward at St. Thomas’s, I’ll call Scott and we’ll get the first flight out._

Habib’s voice pulls him out of that particular memory. “MacKenzie’s father also died. I can’t even begin to think about how rough that must have been on her.”

 _What do we tell Charlotte? She’s never asked about — no one close to us has died._ Mac’s voice had been so hollow, her eyes red and swollen, no tears left to cry. They’d sat on the edge of the bed in their room in her parents’ Belgravia townhouse, Mac fisting and releasing the comforter, breathing slowly through pursed lips.

Ted died at eleven at night. Charlie would invariably bound into their room at half-past six. Will had no doubts that MacKenzie — regardless of the fact that she was eighteen weeks pregnant — would force herself to be done with her own emotional response before then, for Charlotte's, Susan's, and her siblings' sakes.

“Tell me about it,” he breathes.

But that’s not what Habib wants to hear. “And you. You’ve said that you and MacKenzie’s father had become close as well.”

Will elects to ignore that.

“I think we were both so afraid of her miscarrying that we forgot that there were other bad things to happen.”

 _How do you explain death to a preschooler without freaking her out?_ Mac bought a book, like she does for most things they could easily explain to their audience but not to their daughter. And then they couldn’t let Charlotte’s days be ruled by funeral preparations and being smothered by relatives she’d never met and Mac's brother and sisters who doesn't really know, and Will’s certain that Mac heard _at least you have the baby to look forward to_ one iteration short of clawing a great-aunt’s eyes out.

And then MacKenzie had started with the spells of lightheadedness that sent her onto bed rest the last few weeks she was pregnant with Charlie.

It wasn’t until they got back into the States three weeks ago and finally made it to their rescheduled twenty week appointment and the technician told them it was a boy that he saw Mac smile again.

“What was it?”

He swallows hard, examining his knuckles. “A heart attack. He was seventy-eight. He lingered for a few days after the initial event, but he had heart problems for decades—”

“Your father died of a heart attack too. And Charlie Skinner.”

“Ted had the history for it,” he retorts, realizing that he’s being strangely defensive.

“And your father, _and_ Charlie Skinner, were alcoholics. That’s not exactly the easiest on the cardiovascular system.” Habib looks like he’s considering pushing that further, but drops it. Will just doesn’t know what Charlie has to do with any of this. “MacKenzie got closure with her father.”

“She didn’t need it, they _were_ close—”

“I’m trying to say that you didn’t,” the psychiatrist interrupts. “With your father and with—”

“I don’t think I could have gotten it, anyway,” he says, trying to shrug it off.

Will’s imagined it before: what if he hadn’t been too late? What if he had spoken to his father? Would he have gotten what he wanted?

That is, of course, a trick question. He hasn’t a fucking clue what he would have wanted from John McAvoy.

“I don’t fucking _get it._ I just don’t, and I don’t think there’s any good explanation for it, and I don’t think I’d want to hear him try to give me one.” Standing, he drifts over towards the bookshelves, and begins to laugh, shortly and bitterly. “Except I do.” He doesn’t want to turn around to see Habib’s face, just wants to get this out and get it over with. That’s why he came here today. “I don’t… I don’t know why. You know, the night he died, MacKenzie was the one who convinced me to call him back? And then to leave him a voicemail — but my sister picked up, and that’s when… but MacKenzie, she didn’t even know back then, and it was the middle of the show, the worst possible moment. And I tried to explain in shorter terms, there was crew everywhere and mics were hot, so—”

“Will?”

He sighs, drifting a hand along one of the carefully dusted shelves. If he could only do this without rambling like a fucking lunatic, that’d be fantastic.

“Mac told me that I didn’t have to feel the way he made me feel forever. That I could call him if that’s what would make me feel better. That I didn’t have to be afraid of what that meant,” he says, withholding the innate urge to cringe.

“How long after that did you propose after that, again?” Habib quips.

“Shut up,” Will shoots back, snorting. But it’s a good excuse to not speak for a few minutes, and he’s oddly appreciative. Eventually, his thoughts coalesce into something fairly cogent, and looking down at the minute hand on his wristwatch, he forces himself to voice them. “I’m fifty-three, I have a wife and a kid and a half, and I still want to know what’s _wrong_ with me. Why he did it. And I’m just worried, what if I prove him right? What if I’m a terrible father to my son? Because — because he reminds me of me, or something, and I resent him for it. What if I’m too hard on him, or try and make him someone he isn’t, or—”

He doesn’t know where to go from there, a mishmash of ill-formed syllables escaping his mouth before he just stops trying to chase that sentence to completion.

Because he can’t imagine balling up a fist to his child, or screaming at him like his Dad would, systematically working any sense of confidence out from him. Will is uncertain of a lot of things, but he knows he’s not capable of that.

But it’s simple — he’s terrified.

Of what, he needs his therapist to fucking hurry up and tell him. So he turns around, hands on his hips, forcing himself to face whatever expression Habib has on his face. There’s a brief moment of silence before he caps his pen and clips it to his notepad, tossing them both away from him, looking Will straight in the eye.

“Okay, so — and just because I’m telling you this doesn’t mean you get to not come back next week,” he starts.

Even though he feels his lip curl, Will nods.

Habib licks his bottom lip, and then very calmly explains:

“You’re a good anchor, no one has to say so. You’re a good boss, and a good friend. No one has to say so. You’re a good husband, no one has to say so. _You’re a good father_ , _no one has to say so_. You _know_ you’re a good dad, Will. But you also know you’re going to look at your small, helpless, and vulnerable baby boy and love him, and start asking why _your father_ was capable of doing what he did to you. But there’s nothing wrong with you.”

What he feels is something similar to the very uncomfortable pressure in his chest whenever someone, even MacKenzie, tells him that Charlotte is lucky to have him as a father.

“So this isn’t about me?” he asks, scrubbing a hand over his eyes until he sees spots. “It’s still about him.”

Habib gives him one of his wry half-smiles.

“I’m afraid so.”


	4. Two Weeks Ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** Everyone say it with me, "this chapter is longer than originally anticipated." But anyway, here we are, a somewhat typical Saturday for the McAvoys. I know things may seem... somewhat random at the moment, but I promise everything will tie together in the end. 
> 
> Also, the time lapse of Chapter Two has been edited, due to the fact that I am abysmal at math.

Charlotte runs to him as fast as her small legs will carry her wallops him in the knees as he steps through the front door and into the foyer, screaming a very high-pitched loop of _Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!_ until he bends down to scoop her up into his arms.

“Hi,” she peeps, hazel eyes blinking wide.

Lifting an amused brow, Will brushes a dark blonde curl out of her face. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Kiss-ey!” she cheerfully demands, throwing her short arms around his neck, her mouth landing somewhere near the corner of his. He manages to land his lips somewhere on her forehead as he tries not to trip over anything in their mess of a foyer, carrying Charlotte into the living room in search of Mac.

“Where’s Mom?”

“Kitchen,” Charlotte answers. “On ‘lelephone with Gramma.”

When he left earlier in the morning for an affiliates meeting Charlotte was still in her pajamas, hair in two neatly plaited braids. Now, giving her a good looking over, he wonders what in the hell happened.

“What are you wearing?” Will asks cautiously.

The answer is black and white striped leggings, a bright pink polka-dotted skirt, and a green cable-knit sweater. He knows he’s not exactly what one would describe as fashion conscious, he’s interested in how exactly this outfit came to pass.

“Not goin’ out. ‘Cause Gramma.”

Will sighs.

It’s one of _those_ phone calls with Susan McHale — the hour long inquiries about Mac’s health, the baby’s health, if Mac has cut down on her hours, or hired someone to do the nursery, if she’s hydrating enough.

Mac loves to say that she gets her nerve from her mother, but she also gets her neuroticism from her as well, and in the past month his grieving mother-in-law has transferred all of her energy and worries on her pregnant daughter, resulting in afternoon-eating phone calls and long winded emails that demand an immediate reply. And MacKenzie, of course, complies, and immediately afterwards feels guilty about the distance and her mother’s age and how lonely she must be, her hand rubbing frantic circles over wherever on her abdomen their son is currently launching his assault.

“I take it Mummy’s been on the phone with Grandma for a while?” he asks.

“Want Mommy hang up,” Charlotte whispers conspiratorially. (If nothing else, he and Mac have learned that their daughter loves a good conspiracy. If you want her to listen, tell her a secret.) “Watch _Little Mermaid._ ”

“I think it’s time for your nap and time for Mom to go to Aunt Maggie’s thing, but nice try.”

Actually it’s time for Mac to put down the phone for her own sake, decompress, and _then_ go to Maggie’s dress fitting, but Charlotte doesn’t need to know that.

Walking into the kitchen, he settles Charlie down at her play table in the corner before rounding to the marble-topped island that Mac is leaning on with her BlackBerry pressed to one ear, eyes closed. Faintly, he can hear Susan’s voice through the speaker. At the sound of his approach, Mac opens her eyes and gives him a weak smile, leaning in when he kisses her cheek in greeting.

“Two minutes,” he warns Charlotte, who’s unpacking art supplies. Pouting, her shoulders fall, but she starts putting her markers back into their container all the same, instead sliding from her chair to the floor to pout. Fixing himself of a cup of coffee (Mac still makes a full pot out of habit, even if she can only drink two cups a day now, so there’s ten cups of coffee still hot in the coffeemaker) he listens Mac’s attempts to say goodbye to her mother.

“Yeah, I’ve got to put Charlotte down for her… Of course we’ll talk soo — yeah, provided there isn’t a story that breaks early that’ll be… I love you too, Mum. Kisses.” Sighing, Mac ends the call and places her cell phone screen-down on the counter before turning around to face him. “How was the meeting?”

“Slow, petty, full of people I never want to see let alone be stuck at a table with for an hour — the usual,” he answers over the top of the mug of coffee. He takes a sip and then sets it down, takes the two steps across the tiled kitchen floor to wrap his arms low around her waist. “How are you?”

Wrinkling her nose and shaking her head, she places her hands on his chest and leans up to kiss him gently on the lips. Her belly between them means she has to lean up onto her tiptoes to reach his mouth, and he slides his hands down to frame her hips, steadying her. They break apart laughing a moment later when the baby lands a kick squarely between them. Mac startles, rubbing the spot with the heel of her hand.

“Baby kick?” Charlie asks, having materialized at Mac’s side, staring up at her. She pushes her finger against Mac’s stomach. “Bad baby.”

“Does that mean _you’re_ going to be good for Mummy?” she asks, and Charlie’s face falls once she realizes she’s trapped herself into taking a nap without a fight.

And she does, and they turn on the intercom in Charlotte’s third floor bedroom before descending back down to the living room in the first floor.

Wearily, Mac presses her hand into the small of her back, dragging her feet along the plush rug covering the living room floor before gingerly sitting down on one of the overstuffed couches. Tilting her head back against the cushions, she pouts at him in a way that clearly indicates that he wants her to join her.

“How’s your mom?” he asks, sinking down next to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

She sighs, rolling her neck from side-to-side before resting her head on his shoulder. “Still won’t leave the house. Feels guilty that she won’t leave the house and come here. I offered her one of the guest rooms again, whenever she’s ready, told her to take her time.” Pausing, she plucks a spec of glitter off her green draped shirt. “My cousin Hannie is going to come down and stay with her for a bit.”

“That’s good,” he answers softly, setting to combing what of her hair he can reach back from her face. “How’s your back?”

MacKenzie had stood in the shower for a good thirty minutes this morning, positioned with her lower back under the spray, her palms pressed to the tile while she hoped that the hot water would do something to alleviate her pain.

“Still sore, but Charlotte’s let me sit down. This one, not so happy about me squishing him when I sit down, but—”

His hand slides from her head, down her neck and shoulders, and to her belly. She’s carrying bigger than she did with Charlotte, which they’ve been told is to be expected with a second baby. But in the years since Charlotte was born he knows that the adhesions that have been forming since the stabbing have been bothering her more, and they haven’t been exactly slowing down their ten-to-twelve hour workdays, and the stress from grieving her father and helping Maggie and Jim with the wedding and then the general stress of chasing after a two year old and _growing a person—_

“You don’t make small children,” she teases, taking his hand and pressing it into her side. A second later the baby pushes back.

“Charlotte wasn’t that big,” he protests gamely.

(Their daughter _is_ that big. She’s habitually been in the 98th and 99th percentiles in all her benchmarks.

It’s an odd source of pride for him.)

“She was three weeks early!” Mac says with a laugh, moving his hand to a different spot. “And look at her now! She’s already outgrowing her car seat, she’s sure to tower over me by the time she’s like, thirteen.”

Another kick. Or punch. Or possibly a knee or elbow. Last night the baby got the hiccups which made it easy to figure out where his head was, but god knows which way is up right now.

“Hardly. You’re five foot eight, crazy lady. It isn’t all from me,” he retorts,

The baby’s definitely awake now.

“No, but I get to blame it on you.”

There’s a moment where they both recognize that the conversation could continue, down rhetorical roads they’ve followed before — comfortable, fun, affectionate. But instead they fall into an equally comfortable silence, during which he continues instigating their son.

(Andrew, Edward, Thomas, Duncan, Alexander, Samuel, Josiah. With Charlotte, at least, they’d had a distinct frontrunner for her name. The process with this kid, he thinks, will be less straightforward.

He’s an advocate of Edward, for Mac’s dad. For some reason she wants to name their son after _him,_ wants another _Billy_ running around, but he…

For whatever reason, the notion makes him uncomfortable.)

Eventually, though, Mac checks her watch and sighs.

“I have to get going. Maggie’s appointment is at one o’clock, and she’s been panicking that even though she found something with a higher waist that she’ll be showing too much to fit into it the day of the wedding.”

“She is fairly… petite,” he cautiously says. Not that Jim is particularly tall either, but Maggie is exceptionally short. With both of Mac’s pregnancies they’d been able to conceal the state of things until she was thirteen or fourteen weeks along, but at ten weeks Maggie already has a discernible roundness to her middle.

Mac’s face twists into an expression of plain exasperation.  

“I know, I know.” He waves a hand in front of him. “Supportive face.”

From the moment it became apparent that Mr. and Mrs. Jordan had no desire to approve of her relationship to Jim or the final proof that Maggie would forever be tied to Manhattan and her career (Maggie’s parents had hoped, Will thinks, that she would fail to get a foothold in journalism or a social circle, use up all her savings, and move back to Kansas where they could suitably manage her life) he and Mac had sworn that they, at least, would be there for her as much as humanly possible.

After all, Maggie’s loyalty to them and to the show has been unflinching.

So what if the thing that’s finally getting Jim and Maggie down the aisle (after what looked like would become an endless engagement) is a baby? All children come into this world half-improvised and half-compromised, even in good circumstances. And this baby is very much wanted.

Despite his childhood (he almost laughs drolly at how stupidly optimistic he’s remained) Will could never fathom a baby being unloved. Before he gets the chance to try to fathom it (which would undoubtedly send him back to Habib’s office) MacKenzie says something that pulls him from his thoughts.

“She’s going to ask you to walk her down the aisle,” she says briskly, using her palms to sweep the wrinkles from her skirt. “So don’t be an ass and question her, just say _of course_ quickly followed by _thank you_ and—”

“Wait—”

Mac stands, and he follows her up to help her stay on her feet.

“Well, her parents aren’t showing up to the wedding,” she continues, staring at him like he should have already come to this conclusion, like he’s somehow naturally the apparent successor to escort Maggie to the altar. “I don’t think… anyone from her family is actually coming… so I mean I’m already doing all of the mother of the bride things. At least you’re _actually_ old enough to be her father.”

“Thanks,” he deadpans.

But his wife is off and spinning, bracing one hand on her back and the other on the round of her stomach while looking about the living room for her scattered things. “Well, she’s been working for you for seven years now and you’ve gotten her through more things than her actual father has ever cared to do. And I’m standing up for Jim as his Best Matron or whatever we’ve decided to call me, so — but Maggie is going to ask you, probably today.”

“Why doesn’t she just walk herself down the aisle?” he asks, locating her purse for her and handing it into her custody. Mac balks, stepping into her flats, and he feels himself respond equally. “What? She’s thirty-two, and she’s not an object to be handed over from one man to another part and parcel—”

“You actually don’t have a clue, do you?” she scoffs, and then reconsiders. “Then again, we did get married at City Hall… ”

“What?”

He has no idea where Mac is going with any of this, or if the last bit was a reference to how Charlotte has begun complaining about the fact that they got married at City Hall on a half-manic whim.

“I — okay, I really need to go.” Sighing, Mac brushes her lips against his before looking at her BlackBerry and heading for the front door. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” he calls out after her.

A few seconds later he hears the front door open and close, and absent the quiet noises of breathing from Charlotte’s room, the house is silent.

Not for long, of course.

Will attempts a nap on the sofa, but in the natural course of things the moment he drifts off to sleep he’s awoken by the distinct sensation of a little girl gracelessly climbing on top of him.

“Daddy?”

Exhaling lopsidedly (as one does when a small child is seated on your diaphragm) he cracks open an eye.

“Are you hungry?”

“Nope.”

Charlotte violently shakes her head, honey blonde curls flurrying around her face, and she plants her tiny hands on his chest.

“Are you thirsty?”

“Nope.”

“Do you need anything?”

“Nope,” she answers solemnly, and he finally allows himself a chuckle, wrapping his arms around her small body and pulling her down to lie atop his chest. “Daddy!” she squeals, kicking her legs out, squirming within his hold.

“Daddy’s tired,” he says, ducking his chin to kiss the top of her head. “ _Someone_ decided they wanted to get up at five o’clock this morning. You have any idea who that could be?”

“Sorry,” Charlotte chirps, immediately settling.

“You wanna watch something, lovebug?” he asks, already reaching for the remote, finding it on the cluttered coffee table. He knows Mac meant to tidy up this morning while he was out of the house, but between her mother and Charlie, he suppose she never had a shot in hell in getting it done.

Not that he particularly minds.

The buttercup yellow (or however Mac described the paint color to the decorator they’d hired when they bought the townhouse a year ago) living room is, even in this state of disarray, fairly clean and organized. And disregarding anything else, _his_ favorite piece in the living room—the deep suede overstuffed couch that they basically lived on during Charlotte’s first few weeks of life—has not been reduced to an extension of the library or laundry room, which is all that truly matters.  

“Not allowed,” she replies, in reference to their somewhat-strict sixty minute policy regarding Charlotte’s television consumption. “Mommy said done.”

“You can watch _another_ thing if you promise not to tell Mommy,” he tells her, because it’s a rainy Saturday, and what could it hurt. Besides, if she was subdued enough to let Mac sit down for any length of time this morning then Charlie is feeling her early wake up time, although probably not as much as he is. “You can watch _two_ more things if it’s not Mickey Mouse.”

Will could happily go to his grave if he never heard the _Mickey Mouse Clubhouse_ title song ever again.

“Scooby Doo?” she eagerly asks, propping herself up onto her forearms, her feet kicking against his knees.

“Acceptable.”

And so Scooby Doo it is. The original series that he grew up with, which he thinks they have pretty much episode recorded on the DVR. Not that the newest series is inherently trash (not that he’s… watched it while paying an inordinate amount of attention to it), but Charlotte, for whatever reason, prefers the grainy seventies aesthetic and shoddy animation of the first incarnation.

He tucks her blanket around her after she finishes making herself comfortable, her head fitted snugly under his chin by the time the opening strains of _Scooby Doo, Where Are You?_ begin to play.

“We watch when baby come?” she asks during the first commercial break, almost fearful.

Stroking her hair, he cranes his head to get a good look at her face, the tight, nervous lines that resemble Mac. “Why wouldn’t we?” he gently responds.

(But still, the niggling doubt has been placed in his mind. He and Mac have worried about balancing a newborn with a toddler of two and a half.

And with his brain dredging up the memories of his childhood, the tumult and the uncertainty… he remembers, most of all, the lack of commitment that was given to anything outside his dad’s fidelity to Jack Daniels. Broken water heater, no money for gas, no money to repair the car, or the roof. An electricity bill gone unpaid, or a pair of rabbit ears for the television that were too old, picked up too few stations on a TV set that would have a fist through it when the Cowboys beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XII.

But there was always enough money for Dad to drink.

Charlotte will have her cartoons, and she will have _him._ )  

She shrugs, tightening her short arms around his neck. “Babies needy.”

“We’ll still do this,” he assures her, kissing the top of her head again, hoping that this is the sort of problem that can be smoothed away with a kiss. “You’re my best girl, remember?”

“Your _only_ girl.”

He laughs shortly. “Don’t tell Mum that.”

“Mommy no _girl_. Mommy _woman,_ ” she explains indignantly.

“Good point,” he concedes.

He expects her to continue voicing her concerns, but instead she falls quiet again, moving her thumb to her mouth. Firmly removing it from between her lips he meets her scrunched-up look of displeasure with another kiss atop her hair.

But Charlotte doesn’t question him. She’s secure. That’s the word that Habib used, back when she was first born and he was still going to therapy every week.

Charlotte feels _secure._

It’s a good thing, he reminds himself, rubbing circles into her back as they continue watching.

For Mystery Incorporated it’s business as usual—the van has broken down, the mansion has a monster problem, Fred and Velma are finding clues, Daphne’s in danger, when Charlotte lifts her head off his chest and, squinting, asks:

“Are they investi—investigative journalists?”


	5. Present Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** Sorry for a bit of a delay, midterms definitely got me down. But they're over now, so... thanks to everyone for waiting patiently and for commenting on the last chapter! Credit for the glass metaphor that Habib uses goes to "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom.

_“So this isn’t about me?” he asks, scrubbing a hand over his eyes until he sees spots. “It’s still about him.”_

_Habib gives him one of his wry half-smiles._

_“I’m afraid so.”_

It was, of course, going to come back to his father. Anything else, Will figures, would be too easy.

“Then what am I—?”

 _Supposed to do,_ he finishes in his head, even after cutting himself off. He’s slower to anger now, he thinks. After three years of marriage, two years of fatherhood, Will McAvoy has _mellowed._ That’s what the critics say, anyway. But he spent decades channeling his anger at his careers, at pushing people away, at building himself into someone who owed nothing to anyone. But he’s not that man anymore. He’s said vows, has children.

And it’s been _easier._ It has been. And it’s been good.

Four Emmys, two Scripp-Howards, three National Press Awards, a Peabody, the most popular cable news show, MacKenzie, a house, a dog, and two children. He has an _amazing_ life, and ninety-nine percent of the time he is perfectly and incandescently happy with his amazing life.

He keeps reminding himself of that.

“He’s dead,” he says. “My dad is dead.”

 _So is this it?_ he wonders. He can’t fix it? His dad dies, and it gets to fuck him over for the rest of his life?

“Maggie’s parents aren’t,” Habib comments.

“What does that matter?” Will asks, exasperated.

Her parents disengaged the moment they heard about the antidepressants and the therapy and cut her off entirely when her social life was dragged out in Jerry’s complaint. And so he and Mac stepped up. The rest of their cobbled-together family _stepped up._

In his chair across the room, Habib is completely still.

“I’m saying that whether or not he’s alive does not matter,” he explains, his intonation as calm and unmoving as his posture. “Children are fragile. Like glass. Glass absorbs the prints of its handlers, no matter how careful they are. Some parents smudge, some crack, and a few shatter childhoods completely, beyond repair.”

In a moment, he sees a boy born, grow up, and start running. He doesn’t want that life for his son. That’s the American Dream, right? To give better to your children than you were given yourself?

(He’s had this conversation with MacKenzie. Multiple times, in fact, and she’s always quick to reassure him that Charlotte is happy, that they’re going a good job. She makes no attempts to think that she can fully understand the scope of — and he, in return, makes no attempts to fully understand what happened to her and Jim in the Middle East, cannot be jealous of what happened to cleave them together — what happened in his childhood, and how can she? Mac grew up surrounded by the wanton and cutthroat upper classes.

All he knows is that misery is comfortable, is where he feels most authentic, and he hasn’t felt the pull towards it in years. But it’s returned, and he’s struggling, and so here he is. And Mac will welcome him home with a kiss and a smile and he won’t have to feel defensive about needing a psychiatrist.

Not that he has, in years. And never with MacKenzie.)

It has to be… _he_ has to be enough.

“So you’re saying I’m beyond repair?” he asks, almost laughing, definitely bitter.

“Your childhood is,” is Habib’s calm reply.

Will balks. “You said there was nothing wrong with me.”

“As a person,” he clarifies. “You’re a good person, worthy of love and the rest of it. Your psyche is still quite—”

 _Fucked up._ Although Habib probably would couch it in nicer terms.

“Yeah. Great,” he says shortly.

Habib leans forward in his chair, leaning his elbows on his knees and folding his hands together in the space between his legs.

“What would you have wanted to hear from your father?” he asks, making eye contact and refusing to break it.

“I don’t—”

Will’s first instinct is to bolt. Not out of the appointment, or the building, not like he did to Abe eleven years ago when the man kept pressing him to listen to one of Mac’s voicemails, read one of her emails, let him feel _anything_ except a blind, stifling rage.

 _You’re not ten years old_ , Abe had said then. _You’ve stunted yourself to the moment you broke the bottle of Jack across your father’s face._

But immediately he begins calculating the mental acrobatics to escape the junior Habib’s (Jack, he reminds himself—Jacob, but Jack) line of questioning, but after a moment the calculus stops. He’s not that man anymore, and he cannot afford to be.

“Bullshit, Will,” Jack protests calmly. “You do know.”

“I don’t fucking know.” And he doesn’t. Not that they were to scale, but he hadn’t known what he wanted to hear from Mac, either. It took him six years to realize that he didn’t know the first thing about forgiveness, or letting go, and it wasn’t until he almost cut MacKenzie out of his life again. “I — I — whatever it is, I’m never going to get it, am I? Even before he died… I hadn’t spoken to my father since I buried my mother.” He stops, and tries to force his thoughts forwards, towards anything. “I don’t even... “

“An apology?” Jack suggests.

Will feels himself snap. “Yes! I want a fucking apology!”

Jack nods once.

“Would an apology have fixed anything?”

Will pauses, breathing harder than he would like to admit. “No.”

Jack nods again, and then looks down at his hands for a moment, clearly formulating another question. “Would his approval have fixed anything?”

“Have you seen my ratings in Nebraska? I’m surprised parts of the state aren’t burning effigies of me. My dad never approved of me to the day he died. So that’s not a—a mystery.” His answer comes quicker than expected, but he thought about it enough before his dad died. Over a million and a half viewers a night back then, and none of them, he knows, were John McAvoy. “Mac. My staff. My daughter. I need _their_ approval. Because they… because they…”

“Don’t use their love as a threat,” Jack finishes. “Abuse is about power, every aspect of it. Especially love, or the illusion of it. The absence of it.”

 _Yes,_ Will thinks, and even the voice in his head is sarcastic. _I know what it is._ But today isn’t the day for snarking at his psychiatrist. Not with twenty minutes left to the session.

“When Charlie Skinner died—”

“What _about_ Charlie Skinner?”

Jack sighs. “You were in prison. You never got closure. But it didn’t matter — it was something you wanted, not something you needed. You knew Charlie loved you and MacKenzie like you were his children. But your father—”

“I don’t understand him. I don’t want to,” he says. If he understands where his dad found his talent for cruelty, then he doesn’t deserve Mac, or Charlotte, or any of it. “I don’t think I ever could.”

“Why?”

“Because what he did is unforgivable! And — and — I can’t understand him. Not won’t, but can’t. I would hang myself from the shower rod if I saw fear in Charlotte’s eyes when she looked at me! And he did it on purpose. Someone who does that to any child that’s — that’s unforgivable. As a father, I can’t forgive him.”

“What about as his son?” Jack asks gently, but Will feels anger rising anyway. “Not as someone who needs to protect himself from a monster, or protect his little brother and sisters, or his mother. As his son, as his able-bodied, financially independent son. Can you forgive him for what he did to you?”

It all goes quiet inside his head.

Nearly fifty years says that no, he can’t. Or perhaps won’t. Will doesn’t know if there’s a difference between those two at this point, though. He’s unlearned a lot of things in the past three years, but he learned to fear his father before he learned to walk.

Swallowing hard, he drops his gaze to the floor.  

“Charlotte’s started doing this thing,” he begins, trying to decide what to say. Out loud, because the clock is ticking down and he’s been doing this in his head for decades now, trying to parse it out and maybe if he says it out loud he’ll get somewhere. “Pretty much every night now, but it started when Ted died. She’s been waking up in the middle of the night or at some ridiculous hour in the morning, and instead of putting herself back to sleep she’s seeing monsters in her closet and under the bed. I mean, before she’d have to get up and walk across the hall but since she’s moved to the bedroom above ours all she has to do is start crying and we can hear her over the intercom.”

They could just turn off the intercom, but that’s not an actual option. And he’s not like Mac, who can convince Charlotte that the monsters are something that can be dealt with, and aren’t real, and get her to settle back into bed. The monsters are real. He knows the monsters are real — he grew up with one, he’s put them in jail, he reports on them every night on the show.

And the second she climbs out from under the covers and into his lap, whimpering and burrowing her face in his shirt, he’s done for.

“Mac thinks we should just show her nothing’s there and get her to go back to bed, but I know that’s what we’re supposed to do — I mean, it’s all in her head, but Ted was the first person in her life who’s died and she’s two. How can a two-year-old process that?” Mac had tried, _hard_ , to be logical and calm and to just explain things in plain terms. Charlotte slept in their bed that night too, in between them in the four-poster bed in the guest room that Susan has always designated as theirs, right next to the pink and white room with the canopy bed that has always been Charlotte’s.

“The whole idea of death has to be terrifying to her. I’m waiting for her to realize how fucking old I am,” he exclaims, gesturing, standing. If he makes it to the age his father did, Charlotte will be a whopping _twenty_ when he drops dead. His son will be just _sixteen_. “And she’s just been evicted from her bedroom across from ours and she keeps asking questions to make sure that everything isn’t changing too fast, that we won’t forget about her, won’t stop caring once the baby comes. It drives Mac up a wall, but I just take her into bed with us.”

MacKenzie, whose back is killing her and who is developing sciatica with this pregnancy and needs far more sleep than she’s willing to admit and he doesn’t blame her, because Charlotte tosses and turns just like he does and maybe he and Charlotte should just start sleeping on the couch in the library, but Mac is half the reason why she wants to spend the night in their bed. It’s a no-win situation, and there’s a reason why he’s usually the one already up and awake when Charlotte starts crying about monsters.

He lets himself look at Jack, who is sitting up straight, alert, his hands poised on the arms of his chair. And fuck, Will’s chest feels tight.

But that’s not new. It’s been that way for weeks now, starting with anytime he entered his son’s nursery and slowly encroaching on everywhere else.

“I mean, I know in a few months I won’t be able to do that because there’ll be a bassinet next to the bed and she can’t get woken up every time the baby cries, but for a few months she can at least feel safe, right?”

His voice is unacceptably desperate to his own ears.

“Will?” Jack asks.

But he needs to finish getting all of it out. “I never had that. I never got to feel safe. Ever.” And that’s it. “I can’t forgive him.”

Jack is silent, and the few seconds that he doesn’t say anything stretch into long, anxious heartbeats.

“Okay,” he says with a sense of finality.

Will whirls around from where he’s mindlessly paced back to the psychiatrist’s bookshelf. “Really? I say all of that and all I get is—”

“I have lollipops in my desk drawer for the children of my other patients who wait quietly and play nicely in the waiting room during their parents’ appointments. Do you want a lolly?” he offers cheerlessly and pointedly.

 _There’s no reward_ , Abe told him during one of his first sessions, after Mac had asked around, found someone suitable and credible and discreet. _You probably won’t feel any better once you figure it out. It might just hurt more. But you’ll be able to make the choices to make yourself happy, easier. But everything here, it’s gonna hurt. So that life out there might hurt a little bit less in the future._

“Funny,” he replies dryly, and then sighs lopsidedly, running a hand through his hair. “So if I can’t — even if he was alive, you said—”

“You’d have to let it go,” Jack confirms, irritatingly sure.

“And how in the fuck am I supposed to do that?” Will asks, voice growing louder. “I’m fifty-three. I’ve been trying to _let it go_ for decades.”

“How did you forgive MacKenzie?”

“This is _nothing_ like with MacKenzie, don’t even—”

“I agree, the transgressions your father committed against you far outweigh the mistakes MacKenzie made,” Jack concedes quickly and easily, and then tilts his head for a moment, considering something else. “Forgiveness and letting go aren’t always the same thing. You have every right to never forgive your father. But you can let it go, even if you can’t get closure. You’re past the point in your life where holding onto that anger is helpful. You know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here on a Saturday morning. How did you forgive Mac?”

That’s simple. Will’s agonized over this for years, the _what if I let her leave, what if I didn’t tell her I kept the ring, what if I didn’t talk to Charlie_. There’d be no rings, no house, no daughter, no dog. There wouldn’t even be a show.

He doesn’t even know if he’d still be alive, or if he’d have accidentally overdosed with no one to find his corpse until he didn’t show up to work on Monday morning.

“I realized if I didn’t I was going to spend my life alone, wishing I had done a thousand things differently, and it would be entirely my fault,” he answers by rote. “And I could be happy. If I wanted to. I want to…”

“What do you want to teach your son?” Jack asks, cutting him off.

“What?” Will recoils, solidifying himself on his perch far on the opposite side of the room from Jack in his chair.

He smiles in a small way, watching him, and then asks, “Conversely, what did your father want to teach you?”

“I—”

_What the fuck?_

“He taught me how to hit people hard enough that they stop coming back,” he responds flippantly.

“Not what he actually taught you. What he wanted you to be.”

Will snorts. “I really don’t think he had that much thought put into the raising of me and my brother and sisters.”

“Abusers have pathologies and agendas. All of them.” Jack’s voice is increasingly unyielding. “You were the oldest son.”

“So what?” he tries to deflect, again, his resolve crumbling.

Habib purses his lips together, narrows his eyes, carefully selecting his words before opening the features of his face again. “Most men of your father’s era have expectations for their oldest sons that remain to be different from their other children. You’re the oldest son. The golden boy. The leader. The—”

“He wanted me to be terrified to know anything more than what he could give us.” The words tumble out, unheeded, nearly mindless. Will barely realizes their implications as he says them, doesn’t want to acknowledge them. “He wanted me to be obedient and — he wanted me to be a mirror of himself. Except he hated himself, and his life, all of it. So he hated me.”

Unlike last time, the quiet is gone, his head filled with noisy klaxons and alarm bells and he stumbles into the bookshelves.

“Goddammit.”

When Will can look away from the creased leather spines of medical texts, Jack indicates his hand back to the chair Will abdicated, gesturing him to sit again.

“So, what do _you_ want to teach _your_ son?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. Two Days Ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** Well, I avoided this chapter until I could avoid writing it no more. Trigger warning for child abuse.

At twenty-six weeks she’s starting to have serious problems sleeping again, and not from lack of trying. Sleeping on her back is out, and lying on her left side aggravates the adhesions from the stabbing. Although aggravated may be too kind a word, he thinks, brushing the back of an index finger down a faded stretch mark from when she was pregnant with Charlotte.

Will remembers how painful it was for her in the last few weeks before Charlotte was born, as their daughter kicked and elbowed and stretched the mass of scar tissue low in Mac’s abdomen to beyond what her body was willing to adapt to. And five hundred milligrams of acetaminophen, the maximum of what the obstetrician was willing to allow a day, didn’t dull it at all.

And this one is on track to be bigger than Charlotte was.

“What are you thinking about?” Her hand reaches down to where his head is resting on her thigh, her fingers combing his hair into place.

“Nothing.”

Mac arches a single brow up from her mountain of pillows. “Liar,” she says, tapping the side of his head with her index finger. “I know something’s going on in there.”

He doesn’t want to worry her. They already went through his insecurities the first time around, and he went to Habib and he let Charlie hand him drink after drink and Liz rambled on the phone to him for an hour about how if she could do it so could he, and _she’s_ been doing it the past seventeen years with _four_ so clearly he can handle one, and eventually he got over himself. But they’re back, the insecurities, accompanied by an acute sense of panic and the lingering feeling of inadequacy that his father instilled in him at a young age.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, fitting his hand over the curve of her belly and looking up at her. She’s beautiful, of course, her hair thicker and shinier, her skin rosy and clear, her curves rounder. And it’s August now, so all she’s inclined to wear to bed is her panties and one of his tee shirts. Tonight’s is an old and faded _News Night_ freebie, pushed up under her breasts so he can marvel at her bare stomach.

Mac knits her brows together and covers his hand with hers. “Better, now. Soon we’re going to have to add ‘pre-natal massage’ to your resume.”

“Well, I am at your service,” he says, smiling despite himself, thinking back six months to other services rendered, against the sink in his bathroom at work. “Although I think that’s how this one happened in the first place.” Laughing, she murmurs something about how he was exactly _complaining_ that night, which only makes his smirk grow wider. “How’s our boy?”

Almost on cue, he feels a foot press back against his palm.

“Good evening,” he says, stroking his thumb over the spot on Mac’s belly that he feels resistance against. “I thought we put you to sleep.”

“He likes your voice,” she says softly. “Just like Charlotte.”

“The studies say that they can’t hear—”

“Oh, screw the studies,” she retorts, rolling her eyes. “They’re my babies, it’s my body. I think I know. Besides, your voice has a distinct cadence. The baby knows who you are.”

Will has no idea what _that_ is supposed to mean. “Distinct… cadence.”

“Haven’t you read the focus group data?” she quips, cocking her head. A moment later she grimaces and looks down at her abdomen, her hands moving to frame either side of her belly, low at her hips. “That’s my liver, love. You’re going to be just like your sister, aren’t you? She liked my ribs. We make long babies.” Her eyes refocus on him. “That’s your fault.”

“You’re pretty long in some parts too, dear. Some of my favorite parts.” Squeezing one of her calves, he tries to ignore the flaring sense of anxiety burning up his chest. But he’s happy, and he knows he’s happy. He has no idea why he can’t _just_ be happy.

“Thanks,” Mac replies shortly, wiggling as she tries to settle into a comfortable position and eventually settling half on her right side, half reclining on her many pillows. Losing her thigh to use as his pillow, Will moves to curl up behind her. Sighing, she reaches back and grabs his hand to return it to her stomach. “Can you do the talking thing so he’ll calm down and I can sleep? One more night like the past four and I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”

 

* * *

 

It had worked. Twenty minutes in the fluttering in Mac’s belly had stopped, and another twenty minutes later her eyes were drooping, and another ten after that her breathing evened out and every muscle in her body relaxed and Will knew she was finally asleep.

He couldn’t stay in bed.

And now, on the floor of the half-redecorated nursery, slumped against the espresso-stained crib he had hauled up from the basement a week ago, he wishes he had. Stayed in bed with MacKenzie, where he would have kept his panic in check for her sake, so he wouldn’t be hyperventilating like he hasn’t in years in their son’s unfinished bedroom.

She had fallen asleep and he had grown restless and gotten up, gone into Charlotte’s forfeited room that they had painted with a Hundred Acre Wood mural (they kept the green, there was a debate about keeping the color or painting the room blue) at the same time they had gotten Charlotte’s new room painted pink with the Peter Rabbit mural he and Mac had decided to surprise her with (his daughter loves rabbits, and the books, and they chose her favorite illustration from _The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies_ and hired a mural artist to paint it on a wall in her new room to ease the transition) and it came up on him with no warning—

Their son’s nursery (a name, he needs a _name_ ) is—

Will doesn’t know how it happened. And it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, he had flashbacks in law school and during particularly rough caseloads and it’s the reason he _left_ the Brooklyn ADA’s office before he burnt out.

He walked into his son’s nursery — with the carefully-planned mural, the crib and the changing table and the rocking chair that was a gift from Ted and Susan, the clothes his sisters have been sending and the picture his brother scrounged up from when they were boys, the rug that looks like a forest floor and the new crib bedding they’d picked out while _just looking_ at a store in SoHo, still in its plastic wrapping — and it just happened.

(Wanted. Their son is wanted.

Both their children are desperately wanted, and he desperately wants to keep them safe, to make sure they feel loved and secure and they’re clothed and fed and happy and all the things he knows can so tenderly shatter.)

He never knows how old he is in the flashbacks, except smaller. John’s patterns were set long before he could form memories, and they so easily became instinct to manage and avoid. Fiona was there—

_Whimpering, she crawls under the table, catching her hand under the leg of a chair carelessly knocked aside. Her cries escalate, but she knows to quiet quickly, stuffing her sticky thumb into her mouth as she hides. Safe enough, he thinks, eyes darting to their bedroom door._

—but still a baby, barely walking. It was when he was teaching Fiona to walk, he thinks. Mom was holding down a factory job, and Dad was staying home with them. Fiona had started pulling herself up onto anything she could find to hold onto, and the bedroom they all shared was too cramped—

_Her blonde curls aren’t brushed because she doesn’t sit still long enough, and the knots make her cry. The footed pajamas are second hand, but still warm enough. The living room is exceedingly bright, the sun reflecting off the snow outside. Fiona’s small hands were in his as he led her across the floor, and Mickey plays catch with himself while sitting cross-legged on the couch._

—at least that’s what Will’s pieced together, those aren’t the moment that his mind forces him to relive.

_The sound of shattering glass. Dad emerging, still drunk from the night before, from his bedroom. Shoving Mickey towards their bedroom, telling him to shut up. A blow across his head that makes his vision swim. Fiona screaming from under the table, Dad going for her. Blood trickling down from his hairline. Reaching for Dad to keep him from reaching Fi. Another punch, before deciding to control himself._

He can’t remember what Mickey broke fooling around with the baseball.

(It seems important.)

He should have told him not to throw the ball around in the house, but it was twenty degrees outside and there was snow, and—

_Fiona screaming from under the table, Dad going for her. Blood trickling down from his hairline. Reaching for Dad to keep him from reaching Fi. Ripping Dad around, landing a hit on his chin. Dad staggering, and then curling his hand back into a fist. Fi screaming. He looks towards the bedroom door that Mickey is hiding behind. Liz is at a friend’s on a neighboring farm. Mom is at work. Dad threatening to get the wooden spoon from the kitchen to hit Fiona to get her to quiet, but controlling himself._

_A finger, threatening. “You wish you could hit hard enough, Billy.”_

_The back door slams and he goes for Fiona, dragging her out from under the table and into his lap. Mickey jams his boots onto his feet and runs for Lizzie. It’s just him, the blood trickling into his eyes and the pounding in his head, and a crying toddler._

Rationalizing himself out of it isn’t working, and getting his Xanax involves going into the bedroom, and he knows he’d wake Mac if he did that.

His breathing is harsh and loud in the sparsely furnished, darkened room. The less he tries to focus on it the more he does, and he loses count of the seconds and minutes as they pass until he looks at the clock hanging over the door at sees that he’s been sitting here for almost forty-five minutes.

Closing his eyes, he reminds himself it’s not real.

 

* * *

 

“Billy!” Mac looks like she’s been standing in the doorway for quite a while, if how tightly she’s gripping the doorknob for support is anything to go by.

The fear gripping her features lessens slightly when he looks up, making eye contact with her. Not that he’s capable of much more than that; his chest is heaving and his hands and feet have long gone numb, a pitiable amount of oxygen is actually getting to his brain, and he’s starting to lose the edges of his vision along with most of his hearing.

That went almost immediately, his ears ringing as soon as he gave control over to the memories his mind was forcing to the surface.

When his eyes focus again, Mac is on the ground with him, trying to squeeze feeling back into his hands. “You’re okay,” she murmurs, over and over again, and then sits down next to him.

With a strangled cry that sounds foreign to his ears he curls onto his side, hiding his face in what remains of Mac’s lap. Shushing him quietly like she does to Charlotte after a nightmare, her fingers drift through his hair.

“You’re okay, honey.”

He wants to tell her it’s not, but he’s crying too hard and every time he feels the panic wane his mind tricks him into thinking he’s back in the farmhouse, that these arms aren’t his wife’s, that this room isn’t a safe one.

MacKenzie doesn’t demand an explanation, or even ask what happened, or tell him to breathe. Of course she doesn’t, she’s been here before, she knows you can’t just fucking _breathe_ and so she just keeps holding him, even though the floor must be killing her. He tries to focus on her, how the tops of her thighs are round and soft and warm and how her voice is airy in the way it is when she’s exhausted, how her hands are gentle and firm and this is MacKenzie, he’s not a kid anymore, and he’s safe in his own home.

“Here.” Wrapping her fingers around his, she takes his hand and puts on her belly where their son is kicking ferociously. “See? He knows who you are, Will. He knows you're his Daddy. He knows you love him.”

Turning onto his side, towards her, he lifts both his hands to caress her stomach. His fingers are tingling, but when a cloud finally passes from in front of the moon the nursery is bathed in a silver glow and he can see her and finally it begins to seem real.

That _this_ is his reality.

Blinking rapidly, his vision clears and he sees tears welled in Mac’s eyes. His breathing hitches again, and she pushes his hand where the baby’s last kick was.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there like that, but eventually he regains control of his breathing and sits up. Her eyes are still fearful, but she looks more worried for him than anything else.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, leaning forward to hide his face in her hair, to kiss her temple.

All she does is shush him again, before bringing her hands to his cheeks to dry his face.

They need to go back to bed.

Shakily, he climbs to his feet and leans down to help Mac to hers, guilt gnawing at him when she winces and plants her hands on the small of her back. Noticing him watching her, she smiles in a small and tired way, offers him a hand, and leads him out into the landing. Wordlessly, she closes the door to the nursery and tows him back to their bedroom, lit by the glow of a solitary lamp, the one on her nightstand. Her alarm clock reads that it’s just past four in the morning.

“I’ll call Jim in a few hours,” Mac says, standing a few feet behind him. “He and Elliot can do the show tonight. Maggie and Don can handle ten o’clock.”

“I’m fine,” he replies, realizing half a second too late how ridiculous he sounds.

Sighing, she wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her face in-between his shoulders. “It might be a good idea,” she says, voice muffled.

“I’ll call Habib,” he concedes. “Get the next appointment he has available. I don’t want to wait until next week.”

“Good,” she says, and he thinks she might be crying again.

Breathing deeply as he can, he’s trying to clear his head of the cottony feeling when he hears the intercom crackle, and then a sleepy and whiny:

“Mommy? Daddy?”

“Monsters,” Mac says, sighing again, sounding almost relieved. Letting him go, she steps back. When he turns around, she’s bracing herself against the foot of the bed, one leg through a pair of black yoga pants. “I’ll get her. You should take something, sweetheart.”

“I—”

“You’ll sleep if she’s in bed with us, right?” she asks, adjusting the wide elastic band to fit.

“Yeah,” he chokes out.

“Then take your Xanax,” she says gently, “and drink some water and take ibuprofen. I’ll be down in a few minutes with Charlotte.”

So that’s what he does.

And fifteen minutes later Charlotte is asleep in bed between them, clutching her blanket and her stuffed bunny. Anti-anxiety medication slowing the thrumming in his bloodstream, he wraps his arms around her small body and also falls asleep, under Mac’s watchful eyes.


	7. Present Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** And thus ends the fic. Um... I hope it's satisfactory. So... yeah. Thanks to everyone who has left comments and kudos. Also Sorkin has not given us Bartlet levels of Catholicism for Will, so I have attempted to make up the deficit here. Except not really. Eh.

_When Will can look away from the creased leather spines of medical texts, Jack indicates his hand back to the chair Will abdicated, gesturing him to sit again._

_“So, what do you want to teach your son?”_

He uses the time it takes to sink back down into leather-upholstered armchair to try to formulate an answer. But he doesn’t have one.

“I don’t know.” To be a better man than he is, he thinks.

With Charlotte it’s uncomplicated. He doesn’t understand the ribbons and bows and frills, or the braids and pigtails, or her sudden and immense interest in the cosmetics on Mac’s vanity, but he can help with the workbooks and cartoons and games and dog-training and everything else that Charlotte doesn’t need explicitly Mac for. But Mac doesn’t know shit about football or how to even hold a baseball bat and it’s not like he’s the kind of guy who’ll have a heart attack if his son plays with his sister at her dollhouse or takes ballet lessons, but it seems like everything steeped in what society has deemed to be masculine is colored by his own father’s views on how to correctly be a man.

There were lines to not be stepped over, rules meant to box yourself in tightly, to learn to be so unbending and unyielding that you become brittle, and break.

Not for his son.  

“Well, think on it,” Habib says, and then looks at his watch. “Our fifty minutes are up. I’ll see you Wednesday?”

Sighing, Will fights every impulse to say no.

“Yeah. I’ll be here.”

Setting down his notebook, Habib looks him over. “Do try to have a good time at the wedding today.”

Screwing up his face into what he knows is definitely a scowl, Will waves a flippant goodbye and exits his therapist’s office.

 

* * *

 

By the time he got home from his appointment Mac had already gotten Charlotte dressed, and their daughter was twirling in front of the full-length mirror in the entryway, admiring herself in her white tulle and taffeta flower girl dress. Maggie was sitting at the kitchen table, getting fussed over by a hair stylist, MacKenzie, and Sloan. Which he took as _his_ cue to stay out of the way, reminding Charlotte not to scuff her shoes before they even leave for the church before heading upstairs to get dressed himself.

3 o’clock finds them piling into their Suburban to drive to the church, and after hundreds of pictures he had shooed off the photographer so that Maggie could try to breathe through a bout of not-so-morning sickness before heading down the aisle.

Ten minutes to four, they’re standing in the back of the narthex as the procession music (he thanks god that Jim and Maggie had the taste to _not_ choose _Canon in D_ or anything Pachelbel) when Maggie takes his arm and very nervously says, “Ellen was your assistant when I was first hired as an intern. Karen was the one who quit before I forged a memo from you to HR, hiring myself because I was doing the job anyway. Karen wasn’t very efficient.”

He lifts an eyebrow at that. “You _forged_ a memo to HR?”

“I’m very good at your signature. Second best to Mac, really,” Maggie continues, smiling impishly. “Not that it’s hard. It’s kind of just a big W… scrawl, big D, big M, scrawl… Charlie’s handwriting is neater than yours.”

“But Charlie doesn’t sign your performance reviews, I do… unless you’re forging those and sending them up to Mac and HR too,” he replies, keeping an eye on Charlotte as she embarks down the aisle into the sanctuary, carefully sprinkling handfuls of pink rose petals onto the deep red runner. They had all impressed upon her the necessity of going _slowly_ earlier. He’s oddly pleased that she listened, her steps stiltedly measured and definitely far slower than normal.

She snorts. “Nah, I’m a great employee.” Fussing with her veil, she bites her lip up at him. “So, any last-minute advice?”

“Never fight while you’re frying bacon,” he says, trying to shirk the innate feeling that _he_ is the last person who should be giving anyone personal advice. But he supposes that from Maggie’s point of view, he and Mac have it well-enough in hand.

“Will!”

He snorts. “I’m serious, I still have the burns. Hot grease is not a joke.”

Rolling her eyes, she hugs his arm with both of hers. “And I’m serious. You and Mac are what I got to work with, here. Give me one of your off-the-prompter inspirational moments about how I’m not a colossal screw-up who won’t be a miserable failure as a wife and mother.”

Will’s pretty certain those only work when the audience is the camera, but for Maggie he figures he can give it a whirl. “Trust me when I say that having a baseline of what _not_ to do is often a helpful precedent. Not that it’ll keep you from constantly second guessing yourself, but you know what you have to lose.”

“We were thinking of naming the baby after Daniel. Maybe as a middle name,” she answers quietly. “You know, I kept thinking that they’d show up. They didn’t even RSVP.”

“It’s their loss.”

The bridesmaids trickle out of the narthex one by one. Mac, in her deep purple matron of honor gown, looks over from where she’s talking with Sloan and waggles her fingers at the two of them.

“It still kinda feels like it’s my fault,” Maggie mumbles.

Unthinkingly, he shakes his head. “You’re standing in a church, in a very beautiful white dress, two minutes away from pledging your life to another person. There is no excuse for missing that. Charlie could drop out of college and get addicted to crack and I’d still be there in a heartbeat to do this. And no, I’m not equating getting pregnant out of wedlock to getting addicted to crack,” he clarifies, laughing dryly at himself. “I’m trying to say that — I’m just — they’re your parents. It’s on _them_. Not you. There are unspoken rules.”

“Oh god, there are rules I have to learn, too?” she asks, entirely facetious in a way that hints at barely-concealed emotions.

Will sighs, watching Mac approach the doors leading to the sanctuary. “How did you win my wife away from Jim’s side, again?”

She shrugs. “Jim is pretty predictable at rock, paper, scissors. Always goes for rock, first.”

“Yup, you’re definitely ready for marriage.” Gently, he leads her towards where one of the church attendants have closed the doors in preparation for Maggie’s entrance. Stops, takes her by the shoulders before neatening a tendril of hair, kissing her on the forehead, and fixing the veil over her face.

For half a moment, all he can remember are the last words his Dad said to him, at his last Christmas spent at home his third year of law school. He’d flown home from New York for Fiona, who had begged. _You’ll come back. You’ll never make it out there. You’ll come back, and I’ll be waiting._

And that was when Will knew that he could never go home again.

Bouncing on her toes, Maggie looks excitedly up at him.

“When it comes down to it,” he says quickly, listening out for the opening strains of the bridal march. “Your parents are the ones who are missing out. They could have grown up with you. They could have come today. Now here’s the thing, and for the love of god don’t take as long as I did to figure it out: your life goes on. They can wait forever for you to have some sort of revelation that you don’t belong here. But trust me, Margaret. You do. And in a minute I’m going to walk you down the aisle and in seven months you’re going to have a baby and your life will go on without them. Let it.”

If only he had someone to tell him that at thirty, as Bush was leaving office and he once again had no idea where to go except _anywhere but Nebraska._ But if someone had told him that then, he never would have met MacKenzie. He’s far too old to have those sorts of regrets.

Blinking back tears, Maggie straightens his tie. “I’m glad you’re not as much of a jerk as you used to be.”

“Just think, if I hadn’t have been, I would have noticed your self-appointment as my gatekeeper,” he retorts, folding her arm around his again.

The pianist starts again, and they’re given their cue.

“I’m glad you hired yourself,” he continues, more seriously. “And I am honored to be the one you asked to walk you down the aisle.”

His last thought before the wedding starts is how in the madness of his and Mac’s own hasty nuptials, that Maggie was the one who bought out an entire stand’s worth of flowers. Smiling, he lets her lead him forward.

 

* * *

 

The ceremony passes in a blur. Jim cries, which is good because if he didn’t, Will thinks he would have subtly kicked him in the shins until he did, which is exactly what Jim threatened to do to _him_ three years ago.

(He didn’t need any assistance in that either, as Charlotte was thrilled to learn when Uncle Don, at her request, dredged up the iPhone video of their City Hall wedding from some hidden corner of the internet.)

The photographer has them take approximately a thousand and a half _more_ pictures afterwards, outside the little Long Island church that Maggie had found that would be willing to marry them on short notice. Small, non-denominational, quaint. Now a days (not really, probably since he was nineteen years old and first moved East) it seems like he’s only ever in a church for a wedding or a funeral. Ted’s funeral three months ago. Before that… he thinks maybe Midnight Mass one year with the staff, as Sloan and Don had gotten married at the Plaza, not a church. And before that, Charlie’s funeral. Before that, when he was persuading a priest to marry him and MacKenzie _outside_ of a church.  He used to take his siblings to mass every Sunday, made sure they woke up on time and were bathed and dressed nicely, before leading them across the farm to the tiny and relatively unadorned Cathedral in town.

Sunday was the only day of the week that Dad waited until the afternoon to start drinking. If only because he would sleep in while his wife and children went to mass.

Charlotte, tugging on the sleeve of his suit jacket with one hand while trying to straighten the wreath of pink roses in her blonde curls with the other, peers up at him. “Daddy, my sweater.”

It’s missing from her shoulders.

“In the pew?”

She nods. “Sorry.”  

“Not a big deal. Tell Mommy I’ll be right back.” He probably should have remembered to grab it before they headed out with the recessional. Pointing Charlotte in the direction of where the bridal party has amassed, he turns back towards the church, quickly ascending the front steps and slipping back inside.

The ceremony ended almost forty-five minutes ago, so the sanctuary is long empty. He spots Charlotte’s white cardigan in seconds where it lies in stark contrast to the red velveteen cushion in the front row. Forty years ago, he never would have let something like this happen. Any infraction, however small, was an unforgivable lapse of responsibility in his father’s eyes. More than once he had caught a beating covering for his little brother or sisters for something as small and stupid as a forgotten sweater.

They’d go from mass. Walk, if the weather was nice enough, because then it would take longer. During the winter they’d press in together in the ‘69 station wagon and his father would be _forced_ to attend his Catholic whore wife’s mass. And when they got home, John would strip off his jacket and tie and reach for the bottle and not stop drinking until he passed out around nine or ten.

Will still doesn’t understand how a man could go from listening to a homily on God’s love in the morning to breaking his wife’s cheekbone by the middle of the afternoon. But his own faith hasn’t survived it. The closest thing he has to faith in a benevolent god is his faith in MacKenzie.

He thinks he knows how to answer Habib’s question.

_What do you want to teach your son?_

The specter of John McAvoy is fresh in his mind. Perhaps it’s canny, candles for the dead flickering at an altar tucked into a back corner of the church. He can hear the wretched cadence of his father’s whiskey-soaked voice in his ear.

_You wish you could hit hard enough, Billy._

The late afternoon suns glints hard on the golden cross hanging over the pulpit.

“To be gentle,” he mutters, picking up his daughter’s sweater, folding it over his arm, and leaving the church to rejoin his family.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
